1
Essence of Decision
Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis February
14th, 2006
2
Rational-Unitary Actor Approach

• Cuban Missile Crisis as Hard Case
• Rational-Unitary Actor
• identifies interests
• considers options
• Do Nothing
• Diplomatic Pressure on Khruschev
• Secret Approach to Castro
• Invasion
• Air Strike
• Blockade
• chooses optimal option

3
Organizational Outputs

• Date of Discovery -- October 14th
• SOPs explain why not earlier or later
• USIB September estimate
• CIA SOP re transmission time
• SOP re processing intelligence information
• U-2 flight directive issued on Oct.4

4
Organizational Outputs

• Range of Options
• preferred option was airstrike
• surgical airstrike not option
• MRBM classified as mobile
• Tactical Air Forces could only guarantee 90
  effectiveness
• MRBM reclassified as moveable only after first
  week (e.g. October 20/21)

5
The Bureaucratic Politics Model

• Date of Discovery
• 10 day delay before October 14th U-2 flight
• Air Force vs. CIA
• failed Air Force mission on Oct.9
• co-operative mission Oct. 14

6
The Bureaucratic Politics Model

• Range of Options
• the President
• RFK
• the Armed Forces
• Air Force
• Navy
• the Secretary of Defense

7
The Bureaucratic Politics Model

• the Outcome
• blockade -- not the first choice of any one of
  the relevant actors
• Implementation of blockade
• Navy vs. Presidential preferences for blockade
• based on Navy SOPs
• inititial public account that President
  preferences prevailed
• reality blockade operated from Navy-specified
  distance
• result one (possibly several) Soviet ships
  passed through blockade after it was operational
• crisis peak (October 27)
• U-2 shot down over Cuba
• US Air Force neglects to enforce Presidential
  order banning any further overflights

8
The Denouement...

• blockade effective on October 22 (through
  November 20)
• Kruschev response (Oct. 26, Oct.27)
• demand the US agree not to invade Cuba
• accepted publicly by JFK
• demand that Jupiter missiles removed from Turkey
• accepted secretly by RFK

9
Three Conceptual Lenses and the Cuban Missile
Crisis

• applying the lenses to the Soviet government
• was the USSR acting as a rational-unitary actor?
• organizational structure model
• the Arkhipov incident Russian naval SOPs
• bureaucratic politics model